5.1 speaker setup, serious problems. Help muchly appreciated =)

In short, I bought a set of creative Inspire 5.1 speakers along with my new PC back in august, and since then I've simply been unable to make most of them work. It's a high spec computer, fully capable of running such a setup, but the information and help i've recieved has been contradictive and useless to put it in the most polite way I can.

To save money, I went without a soundcard on the word of a friend, who told me the onboard Nforce sound on the motherboard would handle a 5.1 speaker setup just fine.

Since then, numerous sources have contradicted each other telling me I need a soundcard or do not.

Through intense fiddling, I managed to get a few more random speakers working, and through use of the NvMixer software I managed to clone the channels or somesuch and get atleast my Winamp-played mp3s to function on all speakers.

But in games, the core purpose of my PC, I remain with tinny, dead sound from my fleft and fright speakers, the central speaker occasionally makes quiet sound, and the subwoofer is fine.

In general, the central speaker does not work, and I don't believe the rear speakers have -ever- functioned in a game, despite months of half-hearted tweaking.

I can't get help anywhere that isn't a direct and equally useless contradiction of the last rubbish I've been told, and I'm tired of getting no value out of what I've purchased.

Some people have told me I need a soundcard, some have told me I need a different sound driver, that NvMixer is useless... They tell me to get some obscure Realtek sound system, which I cannot acquire due to dead links and the near impossibility of finding it without knowing what the hell it is.

I'm an artist, writer and gamer on computers... I know nothing of sound hardware. What do I do?! >.<

u said u have a high end computer system.. so im assuming u have an atleast 8channel onboard sound... u said it has an nvidia audio driver? ok..

so what kinda motherboard do u have? and if ur already bought a soundcard (and cannot return it) what soundcard model is it?

what speaker model?

I have the Inspire T5400 running on Realtek AC'97 Onboard and games run fine with surround sound. only little thing i did was instead of putting the orange line to the orange slot in my motherbaord.. i put it in the black one instead (and the black one went to the orange.. while the green .. well. stayed in green)

worked like a charm

the fright, fleft speakers are not as loud as my rright and rleft speakers.. while my centre is the quietest. u only notice how they work when u watch surround sound movies..

in games, so far the only one that doesnt seem to utilize 5.1 surround is NFS:MW.. HL2 works nice but i placed my rear surroudn in a bad spot.. often gets me killed cuz i hear the enemy to the left but its actually behind me heh *hits head*

Need some system specs to know how to help. What motherboard do you have? What version of nForce onboard audio? Since most of your speakers work in some fashion, I am assuming your motherboard I/Oplate has the proper number of color-coded audio outputs? If it does, you probably don't have to have a soundcard, although in most cases (almost all) a good card is better than onboard. Without more info, I can only suggest you go to control panel, double-click sounds and audio devices, and be sure you arew configured for 5.1 sound. There is also always the possibility that you got a defective speaker or two. Maybe with a little more info, someone can help. Also, do you have all the latest nForce drivers onboard? :knock:

Neither the sound options in my control panel nor Halflife 2 have any kind of sound testing features.

If there is one somewhere in my sound setting, it's not in the WinXP settings. As for HL2, I'm very familiar with it, it's prequel, many different mods and it's interface. There is not and has never been any kind of 'speaker options' or 'speaker test'. In multiplayer mods there is a voice playback test under the Voice tab, for testing your ingame comms. That's the closest you'll find to a test.

Please Uninstall all ur audio drivers using DriverCleanerPro by doing the following:
go to control panel >> add/remove programs and uninstall anything related to ur sound card. then boot into safe mode and run DriverCleanerPro selecting only the sound stuff (which i assume is Realtek) then go to realtek's website and install the latest drivers. AGAIN!! yes. AGAIN

Addition: Just tried playing with the orange and black wires, plugging them instead into two unmarked pale blue ports in the back of my PC. This made the central and rear speakers 'work', but only as basic speakers. Rear right, central and rear left give identical sound, not surround sound.

first offf.. i dono why ur using nvidia drivers for ur sound.. u have the A8N-SLI correct? according to specs that card uses "REALTEK Sound Card ALC850" so... why have 'nvidia sound drivers' ? when its a realtek audio chip in there?!

u said u were familiar with HL2 and its mods so i figured u knew CS:S .. sorry sir :blackeye:

and again.. uninstall ur codecs.. ALL of them and if ur jus gonna be making movies play and work... then u wont need anything more than XP Codec Pack. if ur encoding audio and video u wont need anything more than Ace Mega Codec Packs.

Im guessing ur computer is full of codecs and different drivers and now there are driver conflicts and posisbly codec confusing each other when trying to play surroudn sound movies and whatnot..

either u do what i suggest and give it a try.. or jus live with what u have.. i dont know what else i can suggest to help u fix ur problem

by the way, was this a custom built computer? if it is, u can try checking to make sure the FP audio wires (all of them) are connected in the right spots in ur motherboard (this is needed so the computer can complete the circuit enabling proper audio output from the back audio slots)

if u left out some pins then it might not work properly for 5.1 surroudn sound

The codecs and drivers are not the issue, this is one thing I know for sure after months of messing with this thing.

Having been given the drive to experiment a seemingly lost cause further i've had some small success by actually getting down behind my PC and finding very faint text near some uncoloured ports, telling me the colourisation is actually wrong and my rear and central speakers were going into the wrong ports. I've corrected this and i've had slightly better luck, now getting sound out of all speakers.

I'm still getting front and central sounds confusingly out of the rear speakers sometimes, but in general there is an improvement.

Either way, your help has been appreciated =)

Oh, and I am using Nvidia drivers because the onboard sound is Nvidia made, and the provided mixer software for the motherboard was NvMixer, another Nvidia product.

jakkar, i have the sam motherboard and am having the exact same problem. i tempered in the realtek sound manager and when i selected 8 channel, even though i have 5.1 surround(genius wood system), all my speakers started to work. now on first look that's great but after a short while i noticed that i dont have surround sound i have 5 speakers that are playing the same sound. i'm really disapointed with this. i bought a new pc a week ago, after 5 years of saving up, and now this.

Try this... Take the black and orange plugs in the back of your pc, remove them from their coloured ports, and swap them around between the pale blue/uncoloured ports. Those colours don't always indicate the right ports, check if there is any faint writing in the metal plate the sockets are set into.

hey thanks for the tip, though i did fix it as well. i was just about to tell you how but you beat me to it. while switching wires i was running realtek sound manager and when i switched the first a screen came up that the connections are not in place and there's a picture on how they should be connected.

Hi. I am new here and i am having the same problem. I got a creative t6100 5.1 speaker set and the 2 rear spakers did not seem to work. I tried the changing the sockets bit (black to orange and viceversa) and it made the rear speakers work but now the cneter speaker is not working. Can anybody help me?

thanks. i did manage to make the speakers work and it would be perfect were it not for the fact that the sound seems to die out after a while and the speakers seem to start giving me crap. I am gonna save money when i comeback to college and start working again and a soundcard will definitely be on my shopping list.